lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (07/27/85)
I finally found out what's behind the sudden unilateral creation and deletion of newsgroups we've been seeing lately. It seems that some of the current mod.* moderators feel that they've been appointed "guardians" of the network, and that they now have the power to simply act on matters that may be too controversial or time-consuming to bring up before the net readership at large. That's the thumbnail, but please keep reading. In particular, the recent creation of a mod.general group, which was flatly announced as a replacement for net.general, apparently is the result of private discussions among the moderators, who it seems felt no need to bring the issue to the attention of the "public." One can only assume that part of the reason for this is the lack of conclusive support for such removal of net.general which was demonstrated the last time this topic DID come up publicly. So, to save a lot of hassle, they are apparently now deciding for us which groups are needed or not needed. This also seems to go for other groups (mod.products?) about which not one bit of public discussion can be found recently (if at all). I'm not necessarily suggesting that the moderators aren't in a position to make some useful suggestions regarding newsgroup creations, deletions, and modifications. But I do suggest that they seem to have assumed an authority that I, frankly, don't recall the net offering them! If there is a desire for the moderators to become the net newsgroup authorities, I strongly urge them to bring their desire for this authority to the attention of the network and allow the benefits and potential problems of such actions to be discussed. It's the unilateral nature of what I'm seeing that I find most troublesome. Some of you may wonder why I come out so strongly against this issue when I'm known to be a big supporter of moderated newsgroups and some level of content controls (particularly in relation to Stargate). The reason is that for something like Stargate, the way "groups" would be created and deleted, and the manner in which topics would be moderated or otherwise organized would be discussed and announced publicly and only those people/sites who wished to participate would have to. But with our existing Usenet, there is no such obvious "choice," and I feel that unilateral actions are best avoided in any case. I feel that the Usenet moderators are performing a very useful service, and I applaud their work. But I think if they want to expand their "charter" on this existing network to more than moderating groups that the community has decided should be moderated, they should come forth and explain to us the reasons why such actions should be supported. --Lauren--
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (07/31/85)
Good grief, Lauren! If I remember right, you were AT the Usenet BOF where this decision was made! It wasn't controversial at all, it was unanimous. The only concern expressed was to make sure the people who weren't at the BOF had a chance to comment, and so a survey of the net was taken. This pointed out that the traffic needed someplace to go, which is why the delay. We finally have a solution to this problem. Has it been so long that we need to reevaluate the decision? The problems at the time were that the traffic on net.general was so pointless that almost everybody had unsubscribed. More than half the postings to net.general were either silly mistakes or things that should have been posted somewhere else. This in turn makes it not very useful to posters because they won't reach many people, so they all want to post on net.announce. Has the situation changed? If anything, it seems to me it's gotten worse.
dww@stl.UUCP (David Wright) (08/02/85)
<...edible line...> I agree with Lauren. I thought net.general was, on balance, useful, and I do not agree with it's undiscussed demise. I admit to having recently suggested ADDING a new group without much discussion (which Lauren then had a partly-justified flame at me about) but to SUGGEST ADDING a group and to ACTUALLY REMOVE one are two different things!! Please give us net.general back. If some of the more sensible suggestions, e.g. saying "are you sure you REALLY want to use net.general" with possibly an offer to display list of groups, to reduce use of net.general were taken up, the previous problem would be lessened (even tho' it would take a while before most sites got the modifications to do this).
root@vortex.UUCP (The Superuser) (08/02/85)
The BOF in question was a year ago, at least. Certainly some things
DO change. For example, the traffic in net.general that I see
(I never desubscribed) is very low volume. I've never really understood
the complaints about net.general. What's a few misplaced messages
when there is so much crapola in the CORRECT groups that is MUCH, MUCH
more time consuming to wade through?
A key point at that BOF was that "public" comment be taken. I never
saw even a rough consensus emerge from the net at large on that score.
Given that the volume on net.general is so low (I'll bet that the
silly one liners in net.bizarre already far out-volume it) I just
don't see the point in worrying too much about it. I am much more
concerned about very high volume groups than about comparatively low
volume groups!
--Lauren--
P.S. Regarding net.bizarre: I thought it was for truly bizarre stories
or tales. But I've noticed that it has already become a sort
of garbage bin for one-liners (and of course endless replies
to the one-liners, including the original text of course) that
hardly seem so wonderful that the whole world needs to see them.
What seems to be going on is that some people just have a funny
thought and now feel free just to dash it off to net.bizarre.
This is hardly the sort of thing we really want to encourage, given
the current load, is it? I hope not. I'd love to see net.bizarre
stay really bizarre. There's *some* good stuff in there now. I think
that the suggested "rules" for net.bizarre that were published were
good ones. But please, let's not turn it into a high volume net.stupid.
--Lauren--richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) (08/05/85)
In regards to the recent creation of mod.general without prior discussion on the net, Mark Horton says: > > Good grief, Lauren! If I remember right, you were AT the Usenet > BOF where this decision was made! It wasn't controversial at > all, it was unanimous. The only concern expressed was to make sure > the people who weren't at the BOF had a chance to comment, and > so a survey of the net was taken. This pointed out that the traffic > needed someplace to go, which is why the delay. We finally have a > solution to this problem. > Good grief, Mark! I was wondering why you didn't remove mod.general when it popped up unannounced! You were one of the ones behind it. Yes, Mark and friends have done many fine things for the rest of us. But, it looks like some of these guys are starting to over-step their authority a bit in their impatience to bend the net to fit their image of the way things should be. Private meetings among small groups of net wizards is just fine. Just as long as they don't make any real decisions for the rest of us without bothering to consult us. I suspect we will be seeing more of this kind of thing in the future from various people. Let's keep an eye out for it shall we. -- Richard Foulk ...{dual,vortex,ihnp4}!islenet!richard Honolulu, Hawaii or ...!islenet!bigtuna!richard
peter@baylor.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (08/05/85)
> I'm not necessarily suggesting that the moderators aren't in a > position to make some useful suggestions regarding newsgroup > creations, deletions, and modifications. But I do suggest > that they seem to have assumed an authority that I, frankly, don't > recall the net offering them! If there is a desire for the > moderators to become the net newsgroup authorities, I strongly > urge them to bring their desire for this authority to the attention > of the network and allow the benefits and potential problems > of such actions to be discussed. It's the unilateral nature of > what I'm seeing that I find most troublesome. If only there had been this reaction when a good many governments (not naming any names) acted in just this way. -- Peter da Silva (the mad Australian) UUCP: ...!shell!neuro1!{hyd-ptd,baylor,datafac}!peter MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (08/08/85)
In article <1438@islenet.UUCP> richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) writes: >Good grief, Mark! I was wondering why you didn't remove mod.general >when it popped up unannounced! You were one of the ones behind it. > >Yes, Mark and friends have done many fine things for the rest of us. > >But, it looks like some of these guys are starting to over-step their >authority a bit in their impatience to bend the net to fit their image >of the way things should be. > >Private meetings among small groups of net wizards is just fine. Just >as long as they don't make any real decisions for the rest of us without >bothering to consult us. Well, I've never considered a Usenix BOF to be a private meeting. Sheesh. Okay, Richard, I have an offer for you. I have a writing career I'm trying to get off the ground. Mark has a brand new bouncing baby that he'd like to see more than once a week. Gene is planning on getting married one of these days, if he survives long enough to finish his thesis [ hmmm. come to think of it, I plan on getting married, soon, too...]. Rick has been working his tail off getting uucp to work right for the 4.3 release. You don't like the way we've been trying to coordinate the network? Fine. We quit. Just give us the word -- Spaf will send all of the mod.announce.newuser stuff to you, Mark will transfer moderatorship of mod.announce to your site, Rick will ship you all of the stuff so you can finish up 2.10.3, I'll pass along my mailing list of list. We can give you the job of head coordinator for the moderators, forward all of the network related mail for you to answer, and let you coordinate the mapping project with Usenix and all of the involved sites. That should only take you an hour or so a week, leaving you a LOT of time to make sure you NEVER make a mistake in any decision you have to make as head guru on the network. Remember, you won't get paid for any of this, and any time you stick your head above water, someone will throw a rotten vegetable at it. You don't like what we're trying to do? Then do it better. We'd LOVE to find a better way, and someone more competent than the rest of us to show us how. GLOS knows, we've tried everything we could and bent over backward to be careful not to muck things up, but obviously we aren't good enough. You seem to have the answers -- don't yell at us, simply show us. Just let me know, and I'll pass you all my stuff and happily unsubscribe to net.news.all... chuq -- :From the carousel of the autumn carnival: Chuq Von Rospach {cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA Your fifteen minutes are up. Please step aside!
msc@saber.UUCP (Mark Callow) (08/09/85)
I feel the net powers are using the BOF meeting to cover there rears.
When Mark Horton first mentioned the BOF I thought "What BOF?". We
didn't discuss this at Portland while I was in the BOF. It wasn't
discussed after I left the BOF either or Lauren would know about it.
He was running the damn thing. Then it struck me. Hey! We talked
about rmgrouping net.general at the Salt Lake City Usenix. Good grief,
that was over a year ago. Come on guys be real.
As far as I recall nobody suggested mod.general far less mod.newprod.
Of course it was a long time ago. The only person there who was
opposed was Andy Tannenbaum primarily on the grounds that most of the
users weren't there to vote. After that meeting there was much
discussion on the net. There was a lot of opposition and the whole
idea appeared to fizzle out. A meeting held over a year ago is not
justification for these actions.
And Chuqui don't get so defensive. Everyone knows its hard work
being a network power. It's also hard work being President (unless
you're Hopalong) but nobody believes that's any reason for him to
take liberties with his power and authority.
For the record I unscribed from net.general over 18 months ago.
I'm in favour of removing net.general. I can't see any need
for mod.general and I feel the need for mod.newprod is slight.
--
From the TARDIS of Mark Callow
msc@saber.UUCP, sun!saber!msc@decwrl.ARPA
...{decwrl,ucbvax}!sun!saber!msc, ...{amdcad,ihnp4}!saber!msctim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (08/09/85)
It would be nice if it were possible to disagree with the policy of the "news gurus" without provoking a defensive flame devoid of semantic content and full of resignation threats. This seems to be a consistent pattern. -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!"
fair@ucbvax.ARPA (Erik E. Fair) (08/11/85)
The meeting in question was held at the Salt Lake City USENIX Conference, June 1984, (or was it Dallas? My memory fails me on this point) publicly announced to all conference attendees in the usual way you announce a BOF session (by posting a notice on the BOF board). As I remember the outcome of that meeting, the consensus was 1. net.general was pretty bad (high volume of total junk), and few people (by hand count) were still reading it. 2. removal of net.general was of sufficient import that it should be put to the community at large to decide. This was in no way a private meeting of network gurus. It was a public Birds-Of-a-Feather (BOF) Session at a USENIX Conference. There were about 150 people in the audience, most of whom seemed to be just users of the network, rather than site administrators. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (08/11/85)
In article <494@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) writes: >It would be nice if it were possible to disagree with the policy of the >"news gurus" without provoking a defensive flame devoid of semantic content >and full of resignation threats. This seems to be a consistent pattern. Okay, challenge well taken. Here is an attempt at a quiet and semantically valid discussion of my previous comment. The basic point I was attempting to make was this: If you don't like what the "news gurus" are doing, then instead of bitching at us, U suggest wholeheartedly that you attempt to do it better yourself. Please remember that the people who attempt to help coordinate this morass of free-thinkers are doing so as volunteers. Whenever one of the "news gurus" screws up, or whenever it looks like a "news guru" might screw up, there is an immediate cry of facism, usually from the same people that hide under their desks whenever it is suggested that someone volunteer some time to try to make the net better. The reality is that we aren't facist. For the most part, we are simply human beings that happen to have been silly enough to believe the net was something worth putting in some time to get/keep running smoothly. Occasionally, we forget a step, or we simply make a mistake. I don't see that this is such a big deal. When mistakes are pointed out, we do what we can to unmistake them. Unfortunately, there is a group of people on the net who seem to enjoy making as big a deal about these mistakes as they can. We are verbally attacked, we are abused, and relatively minor hassles are quickly blown out of proportion and into major confrontations, for no good reason. If you look at the track record of the "news gurus" I think you'll find a lot LESS power building megalomania than you will in an average office environment. Most of us are simply trying to do the best job we can of keeping the net from falling apart. I'd watch much more carefully the people that spend their time bearbaiting or attacking whoever is silly enough to stick their head above the surface; unfortunately, the "news gurus" have to do that all too often simply to try to get anything done around here. We put in lunches, evenings, weekends; answer mail, talk on the phone, whatever it looks like has to be done. For reference, without Mark and Karen there would be no mapping project. Without myself and spaf the chaotic state of Usenet documentation would be even more useless. Without Rick. everyone would still be playing with a VERY buggy 2.10. Next time you think it is 'fun' to rip into a "news guru" take a look at the amount of time that is put into the net by these people and then compare that to your own contribution. If the best you can do is a flame, and the best a LOT of people seem capable of out there are flames, then you are better of just staying silent and kicking your dog or somethings. Oh, excuse me, I'm losing my semantic content. As long as I'm standing up here on my soapbox talking to nobody, may I suggest that people be willing to spend a little less time telling the net what needs to be implemented and a little more time implementing? The number of news experts out there that know the little software tweak that will turn the network into Nirvana numbers in the scores. The number of people that actually do something about creating Nirvana, well, I count them on about a hand and a half. The net seems to be good at one thing -- advice. It seems to be much less good at good advice. As far as implementations, we can't even get many of the sites to upgrade to free, available to compile software muchless do anything about fixing bugs or improving the silly stuff. Talk is great, folks, but talk doesn't pay the bills, fix the software, or pass along the mail. Software does. Unfortunately, most of the net seems great at talk, and not so great at putting their time into the software. So, if I get testy or defensive once in a while, it is because I get tired of being cursed, abused, and bitched at for putting in my time so that you have a medium to share information on. I get tired of being accused of being power hungry (or worse) because I'm willing to do something for the net -- especially by people whose main contribution to the net can generously be called noise in many cases. At least I'm willing TO try and to put something into the network that I've gotten so much out of, and that is better than 99% of the rest of you. I know that, and that is the only thing that has kept me from just leaving the net in disgust, but with the frequency of abuse I see of many people (not just "news gurus" but many of the people with intelligence and sensitivity) continuing to rise, it becomes small consolation. Is that undefensive and semantically valid enough? Or do I need to find better words for trying to justify the fact that I happen to care? -- Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (08/11/85)
It is true that, up until now, new moderated groups were created by a relatively small group of people (namely, the people who have volunteered to put time into making moderated groups work.) This is necessary with a prototype effort; can you imagine a startup company with 30,000 stockholders having to ask permission of the stockholders every time they did something? They would never get anything done. (Note that the removal of net.general, which has been postponed until such time as the net wants it, was never in the hands of even this group.) It appears now that moderated groups work well, at least for many cases. So I propose that we now change the mechanism for changes to moderated groups (creation, change, deletion) to be the same as for unmoderated groups, that is, publicly discussed in net.news.group. (There is some argument for doing this in a moderated group, to avoid the "I vote yes" messages being posted, but there are problems with this; fast discussion and paranoia about censorship are two.) Note that to have a moderated group, you have to have a moderator. So the decision to make the group can't take place until someone volunteers to be moderator. This moderator may eventually have to agree to observe some sort of standards in the group - these standards are not defined currently, but to get the group broadcast on StarGate, for example, s/he may have to promise not to let certain kinds of material through. Mark Horton
rodrique@hplabs.UUCP (Mike Rodriquez) (08/12/85)
> tail off getting uucp to work right for the 4.3 release. You don't like the > way we've been trying to coordinate the network? Fine. We quit. > > Just give us the word -- Spaf will send all of the mod.announce.newuser > stuff to you, Mark will transfer moderatorship of mod.announce to your > site, Rick will ship you all of the stuff so you can finish up 2.10.3, I'll > pass along my mailing list of list. We can give you the job of head > coordinator for the moderators, forward all of the network related mail for > you to answer, and let you coordinate the mapping project with Usenix and > all of the involved sites. That should only take you an hour or so a week, > leaving you a LOT of time to make sure you NEVER make a mistake in any > decision you have to make as head guru on the network. Remember, you won't > get paid for any of this, and any time you stick your head above water, > someone will throw a rotten vegetable at it. You don't like what we're > trying to do? Then do it better. We'd LOVE to find a better way, and > someone more competent than the rest of us to show us how. GLOS knows, > we've tried everything we could and bent over backward to be careful not to > muck things up, but obviously we aren't good enough. You seem to have the > answers -- don't yell at us, simply show us. > > Just let me know, and I'll pass you all my stuff and happily unsubscribe to > net.news.all... > chuq Chuq, Rough morning huh? It obvious (at least to some of us) how much work is involved in keeping the net running in a somewhat reasonable fashion. However, all Rich (and others) are complaining about is that certain groups were created and other groups had were rmgroup'ed without the usual discussions. No one is forced to do what they do to support the net; complaints such as yours above are *not* the way to win respect for what you do. Mike Rodriquez HPlabs
woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) (08/12/85)
> I feel the net powers are using the BOF meeting to cover there rears. > When Mark Horton first mentioned the BOF I thought "What BOF?". We > didn't discuss this at Portland while I was in the BOF. It wasn't > discussed after I left the BOF either or Lauren would know about it. > He was running the damn thing. Then it struck me. Hey! We talked > about rmgrouping net.general at the Salt Lake City Usenix. Good grief, > that was over a year ago. Come on guys be real. It's worse than that, actually. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to attend every USENIX conference. I've been on the net (and been a regular contributor) for over 4 years now, and have only gotten to go to two USENIX meetings, one mostly funded by my own pocket (I was visiting friends in Dallas and NCAR paid only for my conference registration). BOF's should be considered the same as a PRIVATE meeting. Anything discussed at a BOF should be presented to the net BEFORE implementation. I would like to add my own appreciation for the work Chuq, Mark, Spaf et al. are doing. It's a lot of hours for no pay. I also have no objections to having them implement minor decisions without consulting the net (go ahead and NUKE net.wobegon, Chuq... :-). But when you're talking about something as major as nuking net.general, I really should have a chance to have a say in it before I read the announcement of same on the net, even if I didn't make it to the BOF where it was discussed. I also do not see anything wrong with the net at large making suggestions about what the wizards should do. Just because the wizards are putting in lots of time voluntarily shouldn't prevent us from questioning some of the things they do. It would help if people didn't FLAME them. You could just say "I think that's a bad idea" instead of "where do you get off...". A little consideration from both "sides" is in order. --Greg
jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West) (08/14/85)
In article <3091@nsc.UUCP>, chuq@nsc writes: > In article <1438@islenet.UUCP> richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) writes: > >Private meetings among small groups of net wizards is just fine. Just > >as long as they don't make any real decisions for the rest of us without > >bothering to consult us. > > Well, I've never considered a Usenix BOF to be a private meeting. Sheesh. Well, I've never noticed that a precondition to Usenet membership is attending Usenix BOF's (or vice versa). C'mon, not everyone can swing the travel, get away from REAL work (whatever that is) or leave their loving spouses long enough for a junket to chat with a bunch of hard-core hackers. > Okay, Richard, I have an offer for you. I have a writing career I'm trying > to get off the ground. ... excess ranting deleted > Just give us the word -- Spaf will send all of the mod.announce.newuser > stuff to you, Mark will transfer moderatorship of mod.announce to your > site, Rick will ship you all of the stuff so you can finish up 2.10.3, I'll > pass along my mailing list of list. We can give you the job of head > coordinator for the moderators, forward all of the network related mail for > you to answer, and let you coordinate the mapping project with Usenix and > all of the involved sites. ... more ranting deleted Isn't this going a little off the deep end? Volunteers are first, last and always volunteers. They do things because they want to, because they obtain internal motivation for doing something, and not because of external pay, promotion, sexual gratification, etc., etc. When a volunteer no longer wants/is able to do something, (s)he resigns (When I wanted to pretend to be a writer, for example, I un-volunteered as our Mac user group newsletter editor.) When someone complains but doesn't quit, one must assume the power/recognition or whatever is more important that whatever is being complained about. Volunteer organizations are very much wrapped up in the egos of the volunteers. The key to making one viable is harnessing the energy of those who have ideas and constructive criticism(== growth), not starting wars between the riff-raff and those who say "If you don't let me win, I'm going to take my ball and go home." (==decay and stagnation). Joel West CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o Gould CSD) {decvax!sdcsvax,ihnp4!bonnie}!gould9!joel gould9!joel@NOSC.ARPA PS: I'm still volunteering to help on the UUCP mapping project, if anyone has any ideas.